Author: vboboe
Date: 2005-11-27 09:40
... << Question: What do you mean by, "change your tone colour"? >>
... can you tell the difference between your friends' voices on the phone, and can you tell how they're feeling when they're talking? How is that?
Voices have distinctive colour so you can recognize your friend's voice from everybody else, and voices change colour with emotive states so you can tell how they're feeling
... when you try out all your reeds, do they sound the same? No. Each one has a different voice "colour" so you can tell them apart from each other just like friends ... and, when it comes to some (beep) reeds ... enemies!
... changing tone colour is essentially the same concept as singers deliberately use to alter their vocal colour in songs, so you can tell what mood the song is in even if you don't understand a single word of it
... think how kids use different voices on their moms and on dads when they really, really want something, that's deliberately changing tone colour, even though kids do it intuitively and spontaneously, can play oboe that way if you like
... on oboe, changing tone colour is a combination of choosing an appropriate reed that sounds like you want it (such as bright, sweet, tangy, hard, edgy, mellow, wild, etc.) and does what you want it to do (responds well in the way you want it to sound), and how you breathe, inflect, articulate and adjust the reed between your lips, how you choose to emote and evoke feelings, and how you air support everything in that expressive mood from your belly button
... so if you want to play an Ebenezer Scrooge theme, a bitingly thin, pinched and reedy nasal tone colour could be most effective (as long as it's also focussed, deliberately concentrated, energetically supported)
... but Spirit of Christmas Present is a jollier, happier, fuller and robust tone colour, isn't it? You have to really open up everything, throat especially, round out your embouchure, belly- laugh, ho, ho, ho! That's emotive tone colour.
... how does this work when blending with different instruments?
Maybe one could say trumpets are mostly bright to strident, clarinets are mostly mellow to hard, flutes are mostly sweet to edgy, saxes are mostly mellow to tangy
... changing your tone colour to blend with them means playing a bit more like they usually sound
But hey, don't sweat this, eh? It's something that comes on gradually with you as an oboe player who's bonding well with your instrument (through oodles of practice), understands and intuits your reeds from having blown out hundreds of them ... so, puhleese! don't think you have to have a different reed for every changing passage with different instruments, no way, get real!
... for everyday playing, practice your expressive dynamics and articulations and be your best angelic tone colour for your upcoming concert, Christmas theme i presume? :-)
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